Wind surfing involves the application of a sail to a surfing board. Wind surfing, in recent years, has become a very popular activity involving a large number of people. Wind surfing activity has included travels across large bodies of water and recently a Trans-Atlantic voyage was complete using a wind surfing device. All wind sailboards require a fin for directional control, and also to stabilize the sailboard in the water so that the board will move forward rather than slide sideways. Thus, the fin performs similar to the centerboard or keel in a conventional sailboat and is important in maintaining the sailboard in the desired direction. If the fin breaks off, it is difficult, if not impossible, to use the sailboard and sail. Normally, this would cause inconvenience, but would not be dangerous. However, wind surfers are venturing further and further from shore and if the fin on their sailboard should break and the user had no means of repairing the board or replacing the fin, the wind surfer could be in grave danger of drowning if he happened to venture out so far that he would not be able to return by the time darkness fell.
The standard sailboard fin is attached to the bottom of a sailboard by means of pins that fit into groves in a rectangular structure built into the bottom of a sailboard which is called a skeg box. The fin projects down into the water. The fin is not able to withstand direct blows such as those that result from contact with large creatures in the water, sunken logs, rocks, or anything that might be present in the water having some weight and size compared to the fin. The fin itself can be broken and usually the skeg box holding the fin will be also be broken.
If the skeg box is broken the groves that engage pins on the fin that hold the fin in place are also broken there would be no way to hold the fin in its place and alignment. The necessary result of such breakage would be that the wind surfer would not be able to return to shore using the sail, because the loss of the fin effectively disables the sailboard. It would be possible to paddle the sailboard, but that would be difficult to do because the sail would get in the way, and in any event, it would take a much longer time and require a great deal more effort. It is possible that in some circumstances, especially if the wind surfer was far out at sea, or if tides or the winds opposed his direction of return, the wind surfer might not be able to return to shore.
There are no prior art devices which correct these problems. Kollum, Jr., in U.S. Pat. No. 4,325,154 describes a fin that might be carried along and used on surfboards if the fin in the skeg box broke. However, it is clear that the subject matter claimed in the patent and the disclosure of the patent only relates to a fin that is capable of being repaired on shore in a workshop and does not provide a method of repair if the surfboard is disabled in the water far from shore. It does not suggest a situation if the skeg box is broken. Morey, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,422,471 describes a surfboard with a removable fin. However, as mentioned previously, if the skeg box is broken, it would not be possible to mount the replacement fin in the broken skeg box, and the teaching of this particular patent does not solve the above mentioned problems. Another invention to Morey, U.S. Pat. No. 3,516,099, describes another embodiment of a removable surfboard fin. However, its teaching fails to solve the problems of a wind surfing device with a broken skeg box. Lambach, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,308,493 describes another surfboard which provides an adjustable keel for a surfboard. However, this disclosure provides merely for the variable placement of the keel in a surfboard in order to accommodate people of different weight and also to accommodate different surfing conditions. The disclosure does not discuss the utility of the device on wind surfing equipment, and in any event, does not disclose how the device would be useful in case the mounting structure for the keel or fin is broken.
It is the object of this invention to provide a wind surfing rescue fin which may be easily mounted on a sailboard that has been damaged by the breaking or loss of the conventional fin and its skeg box. It is a further object of this invention to provide a device which is easily put on a surfboard when the wind surfer is in water some distance from the shore.
The aforesaid, as well as other objects and advantages, will become apparent from the following description, the adjoined claims and the drawings.